Courtesy of CBC News

“Cressey Development Group plans to tear down Ridge Theatre, which has shown movies since 1950, and the neighbouring Varsity Ridge Bowling Lanes. (CBC/Stephanie Mercier)

 

Plans to demolish the Varsity Ridge Bowling lanes and the Ridge Theatre to build a new four-story condominium development were approved by the City of Vancouver’s development permit board on Monday night.

Community members had rallied to save the bowling lanes near the corner of 16th Avenue and Arbutus Street in recent weeks, saying they were a valuable community facility. About 700 people use the lanes as league bowlers they say.

But Brian Jackson, the general manager of planning and development, said the board does not have the authority to order Cressey Developments to include a bowling alley in its development.”

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/10/23/bc-varsity-lanes-vancouver.html

955 East Hastings Street moves to public hearing next week. Wall Financial is proposing to rezone the site from M-1 Industrial to CD-1 for a 12-storey mixed use development including over 64,000 square feet of commercial and light industrial job space. The proposal would accommodate 352 residential units, 70 (20%) of which would be social housing units. The total density proposed is 6.15 FSR.

Staff and Council gave conditional approval on September 18 to move forward. A CAC of approximately $20.00 /SF was applied as an in-kind contribution towards the social housing component.

A look at the Real Estate Board of Vancouver’s September statistics shows continued evidence that pricing is beginning to be affected by a rapid slowdown in sales. Overall benchmark pricing is down 0.8% YoY and 1.8% over the last six months.

A more detailed review of performance by submarket shows some clear winners and losers over the last 6 months around the time the market started to show signs of weakening. Only 4 submarkets did not show a decline in benchmark prices over the past 6 months: Coquitlam, North Vancouver, Port Moody and Squamish.

Source: REBGV stats. Benchmark resale price change over 6 months ending Sep 2012.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest benchmark price decline over the past 6 months was for single family homes on the West side of Vancouver, declining 6.3%. Richmond was not far behind. Port Coquitlam also showed a decrease of 4.0% in attached homes.

Squamish and Port Moody were clearly two of the strongest markets, showing price increases over the past 6 months for every housing type. One could argue that every submarket will eventually show declines, although some markets, such as Squamish appear to have little room to drop amid stagnant sales activity since 2007.

Housing Analysis Blog has underaken a more in-depth analysis of the stats release; worth the read…